Cylinder has been an ever present thread in my game development career, and in this series of articles I hope to elaborate on all its different versions and how each played a role in my life.
It was late 2005, the Xbox 360 just launched, and I was excited about Rare’s launch games. However, a game included with the unit I got was Hexic HD. The game was designed by Tetris legend, Alexey Pajitnov, and I ended up playing it most of all. Also, while playing this game, I was speaking via 360 headset with a friend I had made about 2 years ago.
See, prior to the 360's launch, I was attending my dream school: DigiPen. I learned a lot while I was there and had a great time meeting new friends and being immersed in a real game development culture for the first time. One highlight you can see below is a group of us from school going to E3 in 2004 got our picture taken with Gabe Newell!
Returning to 2005 at the end of my first semester back at a local college after returning home from DigiPen. It was also my first real return to game development in that time period. After playing so much of Hexic during the 360's launch period, I wanted to make my own puzzle game with its own unique mechanics. This is how Cylinder started.
I learned how to rasterize 3D graphics using the C language while at DigiPen. It was a difficult class, but it was also one of my favorites. I like the theory, math, and code that goes into how to make 3D images appear on a screen, and so I wanted to ensure whatever I made had those 3D graphics. While I had used OpenGL before, I wanted to return to the software raster code I learned to write at school, so making a 3D puzzle game seemed like a good way to exercise those muscles.
For the game design itself, the basic idea was to reverse the classic puzzle games I grew up with. Instead of controlling a falling piece, you match up the shape of what those falling pieces were by manipulating them directly on the board. Requiring 4 of a kind in any configuration adds up to a lot of unique and interesting combinations to find. I also wanted to ensure I used the 3rd dimension for more than graphics. But, also I did not want to over complicate the game. This is where the idea to simply wrap the playfield came in. More dynamic ideas from this came later on, but for this original prototype it solved the reason to be 3D for me.
The prototype only included 1 mode and it also tracked the high score. This mode played very closely to practice mode in our upcoming game. The controls were also set to be mouse and keyboard based, with the mouse controlling the selector and the A and D keys rotating the cylinder.
Early in 2006, I resumed attending the local college. There, I made a friend, Josh, and showed him what I’d done over the holiday, and he was really impressed - this helped motivate me to keep the project going.
I hope everyone enjoys going through this unusual history for a seemingly simple game, and get excited for our new version. As before, please wishlist now!
EDIT: I forgot to include the link to be able to play the original! Click here to try it out!
